Checks And Balances
by Ebony Starstorm
Summary: Hatstalls don't always come out right. Some of them (one of them) caused rather a lot of problems in the end...


Disclaimer, JK Rowling owns Harry Potter, not I. I just like playing in the magnificent world she has crafted.

Checks and Balances

The thing about the Sorting Hat, and the magic it contains, is that it isn't necessarily about where a person belongs. It's all about the balance.

That's why hatstalls are so rare and can occasionally cause chaos further down the line. If a person actively chooses one house over another, that means that someone else must fill their place.

That's also the difference between sorting like Potter's, and a true Hatstall, like Minerva McGonagall, or, as we'll come to in a minute, Peter Pettigrew.

In Minerva's case, it merely meant an academic Gryffindor in the mould of Percy Weasley became a Ravenclaw (and even more of an officious pain-in-the-ass for it). But in Peter's case, it ended up causing rather more damage.

You see, Peter Pettigrew chose to be a Gryffindor over Slytherin (which just shows his own poor taste), thus as covered above, a Gryffindor with Slytherin leanings had to be sorted there. Was, of course. And so things began to change.

I wouldn't recommend informing him of the house he may have been meant for, not unless you want to get badly hexed in the process, by someone powerful enough that whatever he did to you might well end up being permanent, but that's by the by. Who and what he was ended up saving the world in the end, of course, but that doesn't make telling him a good idea.

They say opposites attract, but two people too similar can only repel each other. There was a true hatred between two people in that year that, in some universes was avoided. Each saw in each other everything they feared to see in themselves. One painted the picture to himself of a truly dark wizard that his moderately insane (it runs in the family after all) parents would have adored. The other saw in his enemy all that he feared he may become, an arrogant, rude, violent bully like the father he could only despise.

That loathing caused lines to be drawn and crossed that shouldn't have been. Friendships and allies sprang up that perhaps could have been better chosen and a school became a battleground. Those in charge, who should have stopped it and apportioned blame equally did not. Rather, they came down far too heavily on one set of combatants while giving the other their virtual blessing.

I'm not sure how much the teachers truly saw or how much they, left to themselves, could have changed. Maybe, had the one in power been less biased towards his own house, less desperate to see only shining brightness in the disowned son of dark wizards. Maybe, but not necessarily or entirely.

You see, the teacher in charge of the victimised house hated the young man the side had formed around. The rule of Slytherin has ever been unity and standing together in the face of a threat, yet to him the student was merely poor and almost useless to the plans he had for the house he called his own.

Thus a dark side that was seductive to young wizards who were, after all, merely teenagers and a light side championed too rabidly by a man who had favourites that could do no wrong. Under the weight of all the choices made and made for them another friendship crumbled. Whether he knew it or not, the lion in a snakes skin now stood alone.

It will never be known how many Death Eaters Dumbledore's choices created. Certainly some of those that joined may not have in other circumstances, though equally not all of them were from Slytherin. Some were drawn in by family loyalty, or the academic fascination of using good charms to kill, dark curses to save. A few went to face the dark one head on and were outmatched, seduced and enslaved with the mark as the others were. At least one Gryffindor joined willingly, after all, the hat had chosen wrong in the end.

As some rose inexorably towards the light side, others fell into darkness.

But nothing lasts forever. The bravery and strength that in any other sorting would have had the hat cry _Gryffindor_ in triumph, ensured that his fall at least was temporary. The indecision he thought he had hidden completely helped bring another back into the glare of the sun and, eventually to a decision that would cost him his life. The first seed of the dark one's downfall was planted as Regulus Black saw not just his brother resisted, but his friend too.

Then the seer spoke the prophecy, the last straw that sent him fleeing to the side of the light to attempt to save at least one life if not more. He had saved those few he could regardless, but he hoped and prayed that the great Dumbledore could do more with the information he carried. That he may even save the woman he loved, would always.

Dumbledore heard the desperation in the young man's (barely more than a boy then) voice and knew that he had a way to spy on the dark one. So he promised through gritted teeth and a lying tongue to save the woman his new spy loved and the child and husband he did not. He was never going to keep that promise.

She died, her husband died yet the baby lived. The spy was bound by both masters to the school he hated and a position he resented but could not refuse. He watched the boy that he both despised yet quixotically adored _(Lily's son,_ _aconite and wormwood and his own bane, the bezoar that could save from poisons but never a broken heart, the fact that he has felt dead since the moment of hers...)_ grow up, protected him as best he could. Watched as the darkness rose up again then returned to the shadowy game both his masters had ordered of him. Knowing that, in the end, he may not be able to save the boy and the precious shard of Lily that he represented.

Then, Dumbledore telling him that the boy had to die. Denial and the desperate search for another way, any other way even as one master was dying and the other seemingly unstoppable. Killing the light master that had held his strings for so long out of mercy and not knowing if he could stand without their phantom supports. Fleeing and being cut off in enemy territory by a side that had no idea that what he had done was planned out by their leader before his own timely, untimely, death.

He went back as the one that had had the choice and chose the lions kissed the dark one's robes and cringed and perhaps regretted his choice. He returned to the master, that first master, that he had betrayed and would always have done. Not just for love, as the history books would show, but because it was the right thing to do.

When he died, almost alone bar the son that could have been his and their friends, he did so with a smile on his face and the ghost of the woman he loved always in his mind.

The dark one's defeat was first written in a Hatstall, the choice made by the young boy that caused it and the aftermath thereof.

Indirectly, though he'd never realise that fact, Peter Pettigrew saved the world.


End file.
